“I only have an hour or 90 minutes each day to work on my blog and book now, but I try,” I told my friend Zhenya. It’s probably more—and more consistent—effort than I used to put into my next book before I got my new job. Still, it rarely feels like much.
“I think 60-90 minutes is great,” Zhenya responded. “That stacks pretty fast!” In an instant, he transformed my perspective. At my snail’s pace, was I doing better than I thought after all? Recently, I finally found out.
I had been doing last year’s taxes. As with my book, it was only the odd hour here and there. Every weekend, it was yet again on my plate, and every weekend I made less progress than I hoped to make. Until, last Saturday, I suddenly found myself saying, “Oh. This is the last invoice. Is that…? Am I…? Wow. I think I’m done!” I collected the last bits and bobs, submitted everything to my tax advisor, and that was that.
When you work on something in tiny doses, you can barely see the end coming. After all, it’s the same small number of steps you take every day. It just so happens that, one day, you’ll walk into the end zone. When you do, it feels like a miracle, but it’s not. You put in all the work that was needed—you just did it in increments.
Once you’ve initially calibrated your inner compass, you don’t need to see the finish line. You just have to cross it. Keep chipping away. No matter how small the units, they stack pretty fast.